Rusted Gears

Bryn's YouTube
  

     This is a machinima I have made for the University of Western Australia.  They are running a machinima event which had the loose theme of "Journeys".  This is my journey.  It's kind of a personal take on the theme.  There are already quite a few great machinima submitted and with two weeks left until the deadline, there are another dozen or so expected.  Click the link above to go have a peek at some of the ones already submitted.

     I don't really have much to say in this post other than perhaps what I was thinking when I composed the machinima.  So I have harped in the past on my interest in creating Immersion for the viewer in my 3D builds.  Working on elements ranging from ambient sound and composition and subtle movement to allow the viewer to forget their first life surroundings for a short time as they explore my work.  Along a similar line of thought when making this machinima, I was curious as to whether I could create a rhythm with the fading in and out of the poem coupled with the music.  If this rhythm might allow the viewer to subconsciously change their rate of breathing to follow the rhythm of the machinima.
     I started thinking about this because at one point while I was assembling it, I noticed that I was moving my hand subconsciously in a pattern like waves on a shore to follow the rhythm.   My own breathing began to mimic the small portion I had created already.  I thought to myself "wow thats kind of interesting".  Now I am thinking on how I could work with that for my open ended builds in world.   Creating true sustainable Immersiva is already very tricky without headsets and such to block out RL.  Just too many distractions around your typical computer to let people become fully immersed within the on screen work.  But having said that it would be interesting to see if sound and perhaps text combined within an open ended build could bring the viewer to a certain state when viewing a narrative.
     This is done regularly in cinema, especially in horror movies, but the viewer can not deviate from the sequence of the movie.  The film is always the same, with the same viewpoint and same sequence of events and sound.  In a virtual world build the viewer is not controlled as they are an active participant rather than an observer.  I could set up this experiment in sound only to have the viewer follow completely unexpected routes through my narrative.  They decide where they want to look or go, unlike a movie.  What I could do is have sound triggered once the viewer enters a certain radius within an area.  Hmmm just thought of something else to consider.  Maybe the viewer can change their breathing to follow a machinima because they are not required to do anything at that particular point which may hamper their connection.  The body can relax and follow the lead of the machinima, but if one were required to use the w,s,a,d keys on the keyboard to navigate and do other similar things at that time, then perhaps that uses too much mental and physical activity to allow the body to relax naturally enough to sync breathing.  Anyway, I am starting to ramble a bit, I hope you enjoy the machinima.